Charlotte Hornets: Team history and mascot origins
The Charlotte Hornets weren’t the first basketball team in the state
The Charlotte Hornets was not the beginning of professional basketball in North Carolina. Whenever the Houston Mavericks(of the American Basketball Association) moved in 1969, Jim Gardner, who opened the first franchise Hardee’s, bought and moved the team to North Carolina.
The team was renamed the Carolina Cougars and based in Greensboro and played the most in the Greensboro Coliseum. The Cougars played in an array of stadiums outside of the one in Greensboro including the Charlotte Coliseum, Dorton Arena(in Raleigh), Reynolds Coliseum, and the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum. The Cougars spent three seasons in Charlotte before moving to St.Louis. The Cougars never could make it out of the playoffs and never saw a championship.
The history of the Charlotte Hornets and the origins of its name
In 1985, the NBA was looking to expand the league by four teams and was shooting for the 1988 season to debut these organizations.
Businessman George Shinn was interested in establishing a team in Charlotte and rightfully wanted to establish a professional team in the city. North Carolina was an extremely rich state for basketball with four ACC teams including the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke University and Wake Forest.
Shinn was also building the Charlotte Coliseum which seated nearly 24,000 fans, which was the largest basketball-specific arena for an NBA team.
The origins of the name ‘Hornets’
The team was going to be named the Charlotte Spirit but in a name-the-team contest, the Hornets were selected. The name came from how resistant the city was during the Revolutionary War. British Commander Lord Charles Cornwallis stated the following about the city’s resistance to British rule:
"“a veritable hornet’s nest of rebellion”."
The city proudly took to the quote and even began referring to the city as “The Hornets Nest”.
Charlotte had already a few teams use the name ‘Hornets’ including a Minor League Baseball team and a World Football League team. Annually the Charlotte 49ers face the Davidson Wildcats for the ‘Hornets Nest’ trophy.
The Charlotte Hornets cultural effect
The Hornets was even the first team to use pinstripes on an NBA uniform which began a fashion craze in the early 1990’s. Charlotte’s teal coloring was also extremely popular in the state of North Carolina following the teams debut. Many Minor League Baseball teams in the area followed suit with the teal colorways. The Orlando Magic, Toronto Raptors, Houston Rockets, Chicago Bulls, and Indiana Pacers soon followed the Hornets pinstripes.